Some Insight Into the Upcoming LDR Master Starship Book

This is Steven Petrick posting.

The Lyran Democratic Republic Master Starship Book has been sent to the checkers. We will probably just go ahead and do the graphics for it immediately when we finish the graphics for the Lyran Master Starship Book, since we will have essentially already done the basic ship designs.

The Lyran Democratic Republic Master Starship Book is going to be in many ways the same, but different from the Federation, Klingon, Romulan, Hydran, and Lyran Master Starship Books.

The basic layout will be the same, but because the Lyran Democratic Republic fleet was so small, the "refits" had to be more tightly defined. The Lyran Empire built a lot of frigates, for example, but the Lyran Democratic Republic only built six (including the one it had in service at the time of the revolt), of which four were converted to war destroyers (the other two were destroyed in combat).

One of those four war destroyers was then converted to a war destroyer leader, and two of them were converted to fleet destroyers.

Then the remaining war destroyer, the war destroyer leader, and both fleet destroyers were converted to heavy war destroyers.

Then three of those heavy war destroyers were converted into advanced technology destroyers (the fourth heavy war destroyer was destroyed).

At various points some of the ships had refits installed (and these are given by ship name and year when the individual ship was refitted), but just to make things more difficult, in various stages sometimes when as ship was converted, it was re-named, e.g., the war destroyer leader Commissar became the heavy war destroyer Mediation.

The path followed by the frigate-to-war destroyer-to-heavy war destroyer-to-advanced technology war destroyer is only the longest string, but not by any means the only one. And names do not always change, e.g., probably the most famous Lyran Democratic Republic ship is the Democracy, the Lyran Democratic Republic's lone battlecruiser. But she was the Democracy from the moment the Republic was born and she was only a light cruiser, albeit then named Nightscreamer.

And it is not just the warships.

The Lyran Democratic Republic made a heavy use of "General Units," the upshot being that there is a lot more background buried the General Units ship descriptions. Again because the Lyran Democratic Republic was so small, and had so few ships, their general histories and some generally unique uses are better known. The Lyran Democratic Republic "regular navy" took over the few Manx police corvettes (upgrading most of them to Caracal military police corvette design), but the "police" mission still had to be performed, and that in turn fell to "armed cutters," which as much as the Caracal military police corvettes were arguably too small to really serve in fleet combat (if larger than the Manx police corvettes they were derived from) the armed cutters were really too small for the police role, but were pretty much all that was available.

So there is a lot of stuff in the Lyran Democratic Master Starship Book that will help flesh out not just the history of the Republic, but how it actually operated and planned to "wage war" if it happened against its larger neighbors.